1. Field of the Invention
Example embodiments of the present invention relate generally to an apparatus, memory device controller and method of controlling a memory device, and more particularly to an apparatus, memory device controller and method of controlling a method device based on selectively providing a reserved or redundant memory address in place of a physical memory address for a bad block.
2. Description of the Related Art
Flash memory devices may include a random access memory (RAM) and a read-only memory (ROM). Some flash memory devices may be configured to have attributes associated with both RAMs and ROMs. For example, a conventional flash memory device may be configured to re-write over old data, as in a RAM, and also to maintain stored data without a continuous power supply, as in a ROM or “solid-state” memory device.
A conventional flash memory device may include a plurality of memory blocks, with each of the plurality of memory blocks including a plurality of pages. Generally, a flash memory device may perform an erase operation in units of memory blocks and may perform read and write operations in units of a page.
Because conventional flash memory devices may not perform an in-place update on pages in which the data is already written, the flash memory may allocate a new page, which is erased in advance, and may write the data on the new page.
Therefore, the flash memory device may include a block mapping table for mapping a logical memory address (e.g., used by a software application) into a physical memory address used in the flash memory device. A flash memory device controller for controlling the flash memory device may use the block mapping table to perform a mapping operation between the logical memory address and the physical memory address.
Memory cells in a conventional flash memory device may typically be capable of performing a limited number of read and/or write operations. If the number of read and/or write operations exceeds a threshold, or alternatively, if a given memory block includes one or more memory cells having a physical defect, the memory block may not operate correctly. A defective memory block may be referred to as a bad block or an invalid block.
The flash memory device may include a reserved or redundant block for replacing the bad block if the bad block is detected. Therefore, if the physical memory address translated based on the logical memory address corresponds to the bad block, the flash memory device controller may remap the translated physical memory address to a new physical memory address corresponding to the redundant block.